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it was only a matter of time before the first marketers discovered chatroulette and use it for marketing purposes. the official travelocity gnome is the first to jump in and use chatroulette for marketing purposes.

screenshots sent to mashable.com by travelocity confirm that the gnome is hiding out there in chatroulette’s mysterious corridors on people to market travelocity’s services to: he wants to motivate chatroulette users to step away from their webcams for a moment and take vacations.

according to adweek, “the idea is that folks sitting around video-chatting with strangers could use the excitement of travel.”

the iconic gnome uses signs to get his message across (see above). they read messages like, “this would be more fun if we were in rio.”

when asked if they are tracking activity or offering special promotions, travelocity responded, “we’re still experimenting so we haven’t applied any measurements just yet. once we figure out how we’ll move forward we will think about other applications like deals and offers.”

i believe that chatroulette is more than just seeing random penises, so it’s great to see that companies like travelocity agree. it still remains to be seen what becomes of this experimental test run, but it’s definitely a clever approach to utilizing this new channel for marketing purposes.

how will the future of chatroulette marketing look? as always with any new form of digital media i believe that solid marketing / advertising strategy is that backbone to any success: focus on the marketing objectives, marketing strategies, and then the marketing tactics.